Upconvert 16/44khz wav to 24/96khz wav or flac?

[captain_tinker]

Hello,
I am looking for a way to upconvert some wav files I ripped from a cd to 24/96khz wav or flac files. I can upconvert to 24/48khz with Nero 7, but not up to 96. Is there another tool that will do this? Preferably free... Or at least a free trial period. I am messing with Source Forge's DVDA Author program. Rather simplistic, but it seems to work ok for making a DVD-A that works. I was curious to see what difference in sound if any there was with upconverting the files before burning them. I have heard of some upconverting their files before playing them on a Squeezebox, so I figure it must be able to be done somehow.

-capT

 

[kcl]

I don't think you want to upconvert ripped wav files to 24/96, what you need to do is rip them at 24/96. With that said, I don't know how to do that, but would also be interested in doing it.

 

[captain_tinker]

I don't think you want to upconvert ripped wav files to 24/96, what you need to do is rip them at 24/96. With that said, I don't know how to do that, but would also be interested in to do so.

KCL,
You are right, I don't want to upconvert, I want to upsample. In any case, ripping it at that would probably be a much better idea if possible. I looked at foobar2000, but it would only allow me to change the sample rate, not the khz. I also checked out Exact Audio Copy, not quite what I was looking for, but a nice ripper in any case. I guess I'll keep looking.

-capT

 

[captain_tinker]

Folks,
Well ok... I found something that will convert, Voxengo r8brain PRO. But as a demo it will only do 1 minute per file. Ok, no worries, that should be enough to make a good comparison. I couldn't do a true A-B comparison, but I played the upsampled wav (24/96) and then the original cd it came from (16/44), and truthfully, they both sounded great, and I could not tell any difference between the two. I suppose that that may be an expected result of upconverting? I wasn't technically getting any more information, just playing it at a different sample rate really. Owell. No worries, it was an interesting experiment anyway.

-capT

 

[JonFo]

Upsampling is the only thing that makes sense to do to a 16/44 source. Increasing bit depth to >16 does nothing.
Bit depth determines dynamic range, and if your source is 16 bit, then there's nothing you can do to 'restore' more dynamic range to that recording (short of expender/compressors).

Using my Meridian 518 digital processor, I can manipulate 16/44 signals in quite a few ways, one of which is to increase word length. This does nothing noticeable for me. However, playing around with dither and gain does make a change, and the primary reason I have that unit, is it’s a superior Jitter manager that is a must between my Sat boxes and my pre-pro.

Upsampling is worthwhile, and I do so regularly with Foobar2000, whose resampler is excellent. But best results require an ASIO compliant card and drivers that bypass kmixer. Using stock audio outs on a PC will never give you the full effect.

Using up sampling to 88.2 or 96K does wonders for the finer details of the sound.

Actually, Meridian pre-pro’s since the 568 have had up sampling modes built-in, and is one of the reasons why they are so well regarded in the high-end.
My 568 can upsample, but only on the front three channels, so by upsampling externally, it can just process the 16/88.2 stream with its soundfields on all 7.1 channels.

My recommendation is to rip to 16/44, then use features in the playback devices to get the upsampling.

 

[captain_tinker]

JonFo,
That makes much more sense to do it with a piece of hardware specifically designed to do this, perhaps like an upsampling DAC such as the PS audio Digital Link III for example. That would be the optimal thing to do. I was just messing around doing an experiment to see what it would do. In any case, either way it sounded great. I would sure like to hear a DAC that upsamples sometime. The closest place that sells that PS Audio dac is up in the Lake Tahoe area for me, a few hours away, so it may be a while until I get a chance to do that.

-capT